WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2018 ܂ SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM
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Mt. Angel Brewing Company to close
Bill Poehler
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
MT. ANGEL – There are a few bags of ingredients
and empty bottles left in the Mt. Angel Brewing Com-
pany's production facility, but most of the remaining
product is in the barrels.
Once owner Larry Oien, 72, fills his remaining or-
ders this month, he will close the business he has
owned since 2005 to focus on his recovery from cancer
and spend more time with his grandchildren.
“It was a very emotional decision to wind this
down,” Oien said.
He said he will attempt to sell the brewing business.
Oien has been winding it down – he stopped bot-
tling a year ago and has only been selling kegs – since
being diagnosed with prostate cancer, but wanted to
continue the operation even as his life grew more com-
plicated.
He said he could continue the business indefinitely
while he courted a potential buyer, but he felt it was
best to make a quick exit from the business.
“It doesn’t feel sudden to me, but you’ve got to do it
that way to get it done,” Oien said. “Move on. The long-
er you stretch it out, the more doubt you may have.
Nope, you’re done, finished.”
In 2005, he was working as a manager at Red Lob-
ster in Salem when his brother, Hal, bought Mt. Angel
Brewing Company and the building it occupies on
Main Street from the Traeger family.
The Traeger family had closed the beer brewery and
started a soda brewery in the same space. Oien has
loved root beer since he was young – he has fond mem-
ories of a cousin’s A&W Root Beer stand in Montana.
The idea was to continue the restaurant – Oien has
owned restaurants over the years – and get the soda
brewing operation up and going. The restaurant lasted
Mt. Angel Brewing Company owner Larry Oien is
closing the business. BILL POEHLER | STATESMAN JOURNAL
See BREWING, Page 3A
District adopts
new curriculum
in social learning
Christena Brooks
Special to Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Kim Betker and her 11-year-old son, Shawn, have shared a room his whole life. On May 16th, they will
receive the keys to their new Habitat home during a dedication ceremony.
NORTH WILLAMETTE VALLEY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY
Single mother and
child to get first home
Bill Poehler
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
MT. ANGEL – When Kimberly Betker moved to
Oregon three years ago all she had was her young
son, Shawn Quamme, four suitcases and the prom-
ise of a job. She figured they might stay a year be-
fore returning to California.
Betker had been through rehab for addiction to
methamphetamine and was struggling to find a job
in Modesto and put together a life for herself and
her son.
The pair moved into one bedroom of a trailer a
relative owned in Mt. Angel, a living situation simi-
lar to what they occupied most of Shawn’s life.
For the past three years Betker and Shawn have
built lives for themselves in Oregon.
Betker currently works as an assistant manager
at the Dollar General in Hubbard and is running the
new store in Silverton. And she works one day a
week at Speedco in Aurora.
Quamme is an energetic 11-year-old with grass
stains on the knees of his blue jeans.
But their living situation has been the same —
sharing one room.
Betker and Quamme will receive the keys to their
new two-bedroom house in east Silverton at a dedi-
cation ceremony with the North Willamette Valley
Habitat for Humanity on May 16.
Their lives have changed dramatically in the
past few years and are about to change again.
“When you’re in addiction ... on hard times and
you can barely make ends meet or you’re living
from day to day, you see the ugly,” Betker said.
“You don’t see the hearts of people. You don’t see
the good. With this process, I’ve seen a lot of good to
overtake all the bad. If everybody had half the heart
that the people at Habitat for Humanity had, the
world would be an amazing place.”
Betker, 47, said she was addicted to metham-
phetamines for 25 years before she decided to
change. She said she was never in trouble with the
law or forced to go to rehab, but decided it was the
best course for her family.
After being a patient for a year, she spent anoth-
er year volunteering at the facility before moving in
with a brother.
But she had a hard time finding a job in California
and had a job offer through a relative of Shawn’s fa-
ther – who Betker said has never been involved in
the boy’s life – in Oregon at Speedco.
Shawn is a fifth grader at St. Mary’s Public
School in Mt. Angel.
Betker had heard that the North Willamette Val-
ley Habitat For Humanity was accepting applica-
tions for families, but didn’t think much of it.
She was jogging through Mt. Angel one day and
“What is a fake friend?”
The teacher’s question hangs in the air for a mo-
ment. Then her fourth graders take turns answering.
A girl with a long, curly ponytail says, “You’re act-
ing like you’re their friend, but when they’re gone
from you, when you’re with your real friends, you say
something behind their back that they won’t like.”
Haltingly, a boy adds, “A fake friend is when they
pretend to be nice to you, but, to their real friends,
they talk about you.”
Seated at their desks in a u-shape, the fourth-
graders spend the next eight minutes responding to
their teacher’s questions: “Have you ever had some-
one be a fake friend to you?” “Have you ever been a
fake friend?” and “How is teasing or talking behind
someone’s back being a fake friend?”
Lessons in social-emotional learning – known as
“SEL” in academic circles – are now coming to all K-8
classrooms in the Silver Falls School District. This
month, the budget committee forwarded to the board
a $64-million budget that includes $20,000 to pur-
chase Caring School Community curriculum.
The proposed budget also funds varying levels of
counseling services at all schools. A final vote by the
board is scheduled for June 11.
Caring School Community will be the Silverton
area’s first formal SEL curriculum for younger stu-
dents. Roughly a decade ago, the district adopted a
related program for Silverton High School, dividing
up its student body into smaller advisory groups to
develop social and emotional skills and competen-
cies together.
“We’ve known for a long time that a program like
this works,” said administrator Jennifer Hannan.
“Now, though, we are at a tipping point with student
behavior where it’s time to move forward.”
This decision comes a year after Dana Pedersen,
special services director, reported that more local
school kids are struggling with behavior problems
ranging from poor self-management and self-regula-
tion to bullying and anxiety. At the time, she re-
marked that more students were carrying stress from
traumatic situations at home.
Then, as Silver Falls teachers worked on early re-
lease days this year to standardize all curricula, many
asked for behavior-support help from the district.
Teachers in “every building” asked for tools to help
their students, Hannan said.
A committee of administrators and teachers then
reviewed and recommended to the board the Caring
School Community program, developed by Center for
the Collaborative Classroom. It’s a K-6 program that’s
expanding to reach K-8 this fall.
Teacher Ronda Hurley piloted four lessons in her
See HOME, Page 3A
See SOCIAL, Page 3A
Long-lost photos of the
Mount St. Helens eruption
Forward This
Capi Lynn
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Peggy Short-Nottage and her husband joined
sightseers rushing to Mount St. Helens when volcanic
activity escalated in the spring of 1980. Instead of
hopping in a car and making the drive to Southwest-
ern Washington, they hopped in a plane. From the
cockpit of their Cessna 150, some 10,000 feet in the
air, Short-Nottage documented the mountain’s trans-
formation before and after its catastrophic May 18
eruption with an Olympus OM-2 camera and a tele-
photo lens. Images of a snow-covered conical peak,
mushroom-shaped clouds of ash, and a flattened for-
See PHOTOS, Page 2A
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